A crocodile grabbed a pastor who was baptizing people beside a lake in Ethiopia and dragged him into the water right before the eyes of a horrified crowd, the BBC News reported. Efforts to revive him failed after fishermen retrieved his body.

About 80 people had gathered at Lake Abaya in Arba Minch's Merkeb Tabya district on Sunday as pastor Docho Eshete conducted the Protestant baptizing ceremony, the BBC said.

"He baptized the first person and he passed on to another one," said local resident Ketema Kairo. "All of a sudden, a crocodile jumped out of the lake and grabbed the pastor."

Fishermen used nets to prevent the crocodile from swimming away into the lake with the pastor in its mouth, the BBC said.

Police pulled Eshete’s body from the water, The Telegraph reported, but police officer Eiwnetu Kanko said efforts to revive the pastor failed.

The crocodile managed to escape, the BBC said.

River and lake baptism services are popular in Africa, The Telegraph said, and participants are fully or partially immersed in the water in the manner of Christ's baptism by John the Baptist in the River Jordan,

The commonplace ceremony though, is a risky one in Abaya, Ethiopia's second largest lake and known for having a large crocodile population, according to The Telegraph.

The Washington Post said crocodile attacks are a "known risk" in Ethiopia, or any region where the animals live in large numbers. The Post pointed to Ethiopian government boats coming under attack by crocodiles after the flooding of the Wabe Shebelle River in southeast Ethiopia in 2006.

An Israeli conservationist Ofir Drori lost part of his leg when a crocodile attacked him while in a canoe on the country's Omo River in 2014, the Jerusalem Post reported.

"I believe that adventures build you," Drori told the Jerusalem Post from his hospital bed in Haifa, Ethiopia then. "I feel fortunate to have had this adventure, to have been attacked by a crocodile and survived."

A crocodile grabbed a pastor who was baptizing people beside a lake in Ethiopia and dragged him into the water right before the eyes of a horrified crowd, the BBC News reported. Efforts to revive him failed after fishermen retrieved his body.